The language shift

Seventy-three days to go…

The electricity of the Democratic Convention was palpable and thrilling.  We were confident it would be.  Old favorites and best orators (Barack and Michelle Obama, Bill and Hilary Clinton, Oprah Winfrey), younger politicians, talented musicians and performers, and impressive Republicans who spoke of their concerns about Donald Trump and their belief in Kamala Harris, whipped up the fervor.  President Biden was repeatedly thanked for all he has done. None of this was a surprise.

My favorite speaker was Doug Emhoff, Kamala Harris’s husband and potential first First Gentleman, warm and self-deprecating, who instantly humanized Ms. Harris not because of her story of being raised by an immigrant single mother, but thanks to their romance launched through a blind date, and their ten-year marriage. She fits right in, has won the hearts of step-children, and cooks a mean chili relleno for Christmas and a brisket for Passover. This blended family’s sense of humor and groundedness became much clearer and we loved them for it.

Vice-president Harris’s acceptance speech showed she can command a crowd of 100,000 and is completely in charge when it comes to protecting the oppressed and prosecuting the wicked. She was sent by President Biden to alert President Zelensky to Russia’s imminent invasion of Ukraine and expresses unambiguous commitment to NATO partners.  She voiced her deep compassion for the Palestinians of Gaza and determination to get to a ceasefire, while reasserting the US’s longstanding guarantee of the existence of Israel, Israel’s right to defend itself, and the US’s support of that right. With regard to immigration, she will reinstate the bipartisan bill that failed to make it through congress because Donald Trump withheld his nod from his followers.  Her economic goals are oriented to the needs of the middle class through an “opportunity economy,” specifically addressing housing, grocery prices, and child allowances.

But the subtext of the Convention, which actually wasn’t a subtext at all but rather a supertext, was the change in vocabulary and messaging.  Firstly, patriotism has been reclaimed by the Democratic Party.  During the 1960s and early 1970s, with the Left’s opposition to the Vietnam War, the Democratic Party stopped relying on appeals to patriotism and freedom.  Over the years, those words have become the possession of Republicans.  This week the Democrats took them back and asserted them for all Americans.

Reproductive rights – not a new topic but a tweaking in terminology – were perhaps more publicly asserted than many of us had heard before in such a venue.  This is no longer just about abortion or choice. Heart-rending speeches told how the Dobbs decision of 2022, which removed nationwide parameters on abortion that all states had to adhere to, has now left it to states to formulate their own policies on reproductive rights.  Twenty-two states have since taken away the right to abortion, a policy so heavily enforced that doctors are frightened to minister to women having miscarriages for fear they will be accused of carrying out an abortion.  Some of these same states threaten to make it impossible to seek abortion in another state, and some threaten to take away the right to in vitro fertilization. While many of us would take the view that abortion should be rare, we do not believe the state should have this much control over people’s personal decisions. Three high-profile speakers – Michelle Obama, Tim Walz and Tammy Duckworth – spoke of the pain of infertility and how they would not have their children were it not for in vitro or other similar measures.  It was all out there.  

Another shift in language appeared in the way the white, rural middle class was honored repeatedly, most notably in the person of Ms. Harris’s chosen running mate, Governor Tim Walz, with frequent references to his plaid shirts, football coaching, high school teaching, hunting, and his winning of his seat in Congress from a traditionally red (Republican) district.  Harris, Walz, Emhoff, both Obamas and many others emphasized their roots in families where resources were limited, where hard work, after school jobs, and perseverance were the values that got them through.  As they all underlined, it is only in this country that people of such humble beginnings have the real possibility to make their lives count on the national stage.  While American success stories are often recounted in terms of accumulated wealth, these people were telling a different American story, of public service and offering a helping hand to others.  The emphasis on ordinary folks might seem to be a no-brainer for the Democratic Party. It was germane for Franklin Roosevelt in the Depression years, and is central for President Biden. But this is an absolutely crucial plank for the party going forward.  The Democratic Party must turn the page from being understood as the party of the elite, a problem that made it easy for Mr. Trump’s false populism to make false promises to the middle-class and the left-behinds.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, in the past five weeks, Kamala Harris and Tim Walz have changed the Democratic Party’s language in relation to Donald Trump. As Ms. Harris said in her acceptance speech, Donald Trump is an “unserious” man, even though the consequences of his being elected would be serious.    Harris and Walz have helped the party and the nation joke about Donald Trump.  “Weird” was only their first foray in this regard.  Barack Obama picked up the theme when he kidded about Mr. Trump’s obsession with crowd size. At one point Harris said, of the Republicans, “They must be out of their minds.” The Democratic Convention broke the spell of heaviness and rancor that Donald Trump has been able to cast over this country.

And then there was the joy. The word “joy” was used repeatedly, perhaps over-used, in the past week. But the eruption of joy was a proclamation that, in the words of Maryland senate candidate Angela Alsobrooks, we are “frozen in fear” no longer. 

Enthusiasm for Harris is greater than the sum of its parts

Eleven weeks to go….

Enthusiasm for Kamala Harris goes beyond the supposition that she has a better chance than President Biden of defeating Donald Trump. It certainly does not rest purely on excitement about having a female candidate of color.  Nor does it wholly stand on a hope that certain left-of-center policies will be pursued if Harris wins. The enthusiasm contains these elements, but it transcends them.

The new-found excitement that has emerged with Harris’s candidacy arises from the sense that the current malaise in American politics is being subjected to a tectonic shift. Kamala Harris offers us a reset.

I am one of those who believe that Donald Trump spells danger for America.  This does not mean that I don’t understand some of the aspirations of those who have said they will vote for him.  He has managed to captivate millions of Americans whose sincerely held values fall in the right-of-center column. Freedom of choice is the essence of democracy, and I respect the right of people to hold opinions, and vote for policies, that do not align with my personally held values.

But a core value in this country, set by George Washington in 1797 and observed ever since, is that the President walks away from his post when that President’s time is over.  Donald Trump blatantly rejected this principle when he tried to influence his party to resist certifying a fair election in January 2021, when he refused to use his position to halt the January 6, 2021 storming of the capital, and when he declared, as he has a number of times, he will not accept an election result in November 2024 unless he is declared the winner. Donald Trump’s phone call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensburger on January 2, 2021 pressuring him to reverse Georgia’s election results, and the efforts of a number of Republican state legislators to appoint alternative Electors to tip the Electoral College vote, openly defy the norms of democracy. That the Republican party leadership of old has allowed this state of affairs to proceed with minimal protest is mystifying and frightening.

New York Times columnist David French describes our current Republican party as a party that has removed all considerations of character from qualifications for leadership, that tolerates overt lying, that publicly encourages and applauds violence, and that has treated sexual abuse and adultery as irrelevant to the law and the perpetrator’s capacity to lead.

This nihilist brand of politics has created a sour mood in our country. Civility is rarer as a result.  Oppositional behavior is pervasive.  This is not the tone we want from our leadership in a moment when climate change, war, and global migration cast a shadow over our world.  We are responsive to Harris because she is changing the tone of the discourse.  She is calling things as she sees them and projecting an optimism that feels like an antidote to the strange politics of the past eight years.

So, yes, I would like to use my vote to assert values that are different from Donald Trump’s. I believe Kamala Harris will bring a competent and refreshing presence to the White House and to American politics.  For those who say she shows few signs of promise that qualify her to hold the highest office in the land, I beg to differ.

Harris’s twenty-year career as a California prosecutor, which led to her election in 2010 as Attorney General of California, the world’s fifth largest economy, is impressive.  There are plenty of instances we could cite of her adept capacity to perform that job. Shortly after becoming Attorney-General, she made an impact right away by pulling out of a potential settlement of an improper mortgage practices case with the country’s five largest financial institutions.  In 2012 she settled that case with a $20 million payout, five times the original payout figure proposed. This and other cases suggest a high level of professional confidence, capability, and judgment.

Her four years in the US Senate – 2017-2021 – as only the second African American woman to be elected to the Senate, gave her experience of the federal legislative system.  Following those four years she had four years as Vice President of the United States. 

This accumulation of experience is a great deal more than Barack Obama had when he was elected in 2008. Obama also had had four years in the US Senate, but his additional work experience as community organizer, Senior Lecturer in law at the University of Chicago, and Illinois State Legislator does not add up to as impressive a resume.

It is true that Harris did not seem well attuned when she entered the presidential campaign fray in 2019. She adopted far-left positions, some of which she has backed away from.  Her “tough on crime” stance as a prosecutor did not match well with the nation’s George Floyd moment when police brutality was exposed.  She struggled to find self-confidence. She was, unmistakably, a DEI candidate when Joe Biden chose her as his running mate. After their election, the Biden administration was not helpful to her in finding tasks that would show off her skills.  But she has been unfairly accused by her adversaries of having failed in achieving reform of US immigration policies on the southern border, for, in fact, she was never tasked with being an “immigration czar.”  Her task – hardly less difficult – was to enhance relationships with the countries south of the border from which immigrants have been coming, and work with them to stem the tide. 

People’s uncertainty about Harris made Democratic Party insiders slow to act to remove Biden as an option for the 2024 election. But the enthusiasm for Harris, born on July 21, 2024, arose because we saw that she had found her footing.  She was ready and convincing in the moment of crisis. Commented Tressie McMillan Cottom in the New York Times, “Kamala Harris is a different candidate than we saw four years ago. She is even a different rhetorician than we saw six months ago.”

Now, the question is, whether she can sustain this under national scrutiny during the Democratic Convention which begins day after tomorrow in Chicago.

Harris overtakes Trump in three important states

Twelve weeks to go…

This morning’s New York Times presents Times/Siena poll numbers from August 5-9 indicating that Kamala Harris is four percentage points ahead of Donald Trump in three of the most important battleground states: Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

This is a huge shift. Throughout the year leading up to President Biden’s withdrawal from the race, Joe Biden was at best equal to, but more often slightly behind, Donald Trump.

In the other four states (Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, and North Carolina) that make up the crucial seven swing states – PBS NewsHour says three have moved from the Trump column to “Tossup.” Newsweek reports that in the seven swing states taken together, Harris leads Trump 42% to 40%.

Harris has hard work to do to consolidate this.  For one thing, the margin of error in the New York Times poll is just over 4%.  In addition, voters have made it clear they still trust Donald Trump more to handle matters of the economy and immigration.

Meantime, Harris took a mere 18 days to choose a running mate, drawing her followers into the suspense and debate created by the “short list,” then choosing the least-nationally-known of her six finalists. 

Tim Walz brings both a down-home, ordinary-guy aura that might soften the edges of the elitist tone of the Democratic party, while also bringing a further left political position than the other contenders.  His capacity to help Harris appeal to the undecided center thus might be a mixed bag.  As far as the optics were concerned, I had hoped for Governor Andy Beshear of Kentucky, who is in his forties and projects high competence along with youthfulness. But Beshear also has the elitist credentials that, on the long term, Democrats need to offset. The Democratic Party needs to retrieve its identification with ordinary white folks of the middle class, and Walz could help with that.

The standard belief about the V-P pick is that it doesn’t make any difference to the race.  But nothing is standard about this particular race, with Harris, a woman of Jamaican and South Asian parentage, emerging late as the Democratic candidate, and spearheading a rapid turnaround in the emotional tone of the national political scene.

Harris, apparently, chose the man she felt most comfortable working with. Some fear that he is too nice and somewhat lackluster.  It is too soon to know. Harris-Walz are attempting to define a new “normal,” says the Economist (https://www.economist.com/united-states/2024/08/07/the-wisdom-in-calling-donald-trump-weird), and Tim Walz comes across as quintessentially normal. In this new “normal,” Donald Trump is not to be interpreted as having coherence, and instead is dubbed as downright “weird.”

Laughter is a continuing theme in the Harris-Walz camp.  Walz thanked Harris for “bringing back the joy!” in their first rally. Harris’s sense of humor is all over this campaign. 

The elation of these new developments is still in the air, even if we hear frequent references to the inevitable end of the “honeymoon.”  A legitimate criticism coming at her from both the right and the left just now is that we haven’t heard her in a press conference or a one-on-one interview.  Does she have what it takes to speak extemporaneously in those situations and present herself and her vision eloquently?

Of course, Harris’s big opportunity to present herself and her running mate to the nation will occur during the week of the Democratic Party’s convention in Chicago, starting August 19. This gives her a perfect staging ground to define herself and her campaign.  Two weeks from now, we will know a good deal more about her.

I ‘m no political strategist, but I do have the wellbeing of this country at heart. I hope that Harris-Walz find ways to state their understanding, and at some level respect, for how those tilting to the right see the issues.  Harris-Walz will stand for what they believe, but it helps lower the tone of animosity in the country as a whole if you can acknowledge legitimate concerns that your opponents express. After all, Harris and Walz speak frequently of their belief that their party has room for everyone. In my view, concerns on the right about abortion and illegal immigration having become too easy, and inflation too high, are not “weird” views. If Harris-Walz can acknowledge this, they might be able to contribute to a new discourse to displace the constant discounting of the other that has come to define our politics.

The Vibe Shift

This is not only a political movement. This is a social movement. This is an inflection point. And this is, to me, a spiritual movement… 

-   Tracy Nailor, 56-year-old Atlanta pediatrician.

The excitement is electric. Kamala Harris is the Democratic candidate for president in 2024 – confirmed Friday when she received pledges of sufficient electoral votes.

The next thirteen and a half weeks are going to be so crucial to the future of this country that it seems imperative to record and share reflections and impressions. It is an inflection point for us all. So I’m going to track these weeks in my blog.

I’m not naïve.  She could fail to win.  But in seventy-two hours she turned American politics around, and she is still doing so.

No question, we live in a world with challenges that would be paralyzing to the faint of heart.  What we deeply don’t want is a set of leadership choices that locks in the paralysis before we even get out the starting gate. But that was pretty much what many of us were feeling during a presidential campaign that had bogged down as a contest about which of two over-seventy-eight-year-olds was least uninspiring.  With my brain I knew who deserved my vote in that setup.  But could he win?  Young people, African-Americans, and Arab-Americans were, apparently, giving up on Biden.  I could understand why. I felt peeved with my country for getting us into to such a pickle. 

Cautionary phrases about the Kamala honeymoon are repeated frequently.  But, says Michelle Goldberg of the New York Times, “no iron law of politics” says a political honeymoon has to end. “Yes,” Goldberg continues, “she’ll have to explain her shifting positions on issues like fracking, single-payer health insurance, and border enforcement. But when it comes to Trump, we’ve seen that the feelings he evokes in his supporters matter more than the inconsistencies in his record. Maybe he’s unique, or maybe that’s just how politics works in a highly polarized country with a short attention span, a fragmented media and a longing for change.”

But let’s take a few minutes to enjoy this moment for what it is.  First, those of us who believe Trump is a danger to America’s future have a realistic possibility to challenge that Trumpian future.  Secondly, the choice of a Biden alternative occurred rapidly.  We know a testing primary would have been a good way to put Harris through her paces and to give the nation more participation in the choice, but the fact is, nobody wanted to oppose her.  Is this a moment to wring our hands about that?  We’re sensible enough to recognize that in the pinch we were in, the pragmatic move is the right one. Thirdly, amazing as it seems, she is a woman, a woman of black and Asian origin.  And while all kinds of work has proceeded over years to get us to the point of having a black female vice-president, when it came time to endorse her for the presidency, this was not a DEI choice.  It was simply the right and appropriate choice.  And fourthly, for all of us women participating in the extraordinary turn-around of female consciousness and inclusion that has been the mark of post-World War II western society, Kamala sums it up, models the things we have been learning and asserting and applying throughout our lifetime – finding voice, discovering what it is to be yourself on a big stage, mobilizing the range of gifts that women bring to high office when they use their authority and intelligence to make a difference.

Kamala signifies a future worth fighting for.  We are not bogged down.  We have seized history by the throat. We can be proud participants in American democracy because our candidate is an emblem of smarts and a capacity to rise to the moment.

Said Jess Bidgood of the New York Times on July 25, “A presidential race that felt to many Democrats like a dispiriting slog toward an all-but-certain defeat by Trump suddenly feels light. Hopeful.  People are even feeling….is that joy?”

Yes.  Joy is exactly what we feel. An informal poll of friends abroad indicates the joy has global reach. In this hot summer of global warming and environmental deterioration, in this world network of displacement and desperation, in the midst of war in one crucial part of the world and incipient war in another, in this American gridlock of a deeply divided culture, we are enjoying a boost of energy and good humor.

Will Kamala Harris be able to translate a magnificent opportunity into a win?  Will she gain in strength and confidence?  According to standard beliefs about American politics, she is not an ideal candidate – she has done poorly at winning the confidence of staff and of stating a clear vision for the country.  She flubbed in 2019. But that was then, and this is now. She’s a learner. People who have been watching her say she has grown in stature in the last two years, in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Dobb’s decision. Rallying women to defend essential rights to needed health care as well as the right to choose, she has connected with people, and in the past thirteen days those connections have grown.  She calls all of us to step into who we are and accept the challenges before us.  The rest of us were slow to foresee what the moment would look like. But she knew, and so far, she has shown herself ready.